Okay i'm just making an educated guess here..Originally Dena had planned for the two Olympic stories to be Max & Stephanie in France and a Daniel/Chelsea fantasy set in the 1940's..And Ed realized what a horrible idea it was..So then we got Stefano back and they changed it to Nicole, Sami, Ej, Lucas and Chloe..I'm just happy with the stories we are getting, when you think of what it could have been..

One way to look at this is that it gives them two weeks to clean things up a bit. I can see the logic in short-term arcs given the circumstances but it also makes me wonder if more is going on. I always felt Higley would be gone around the start of Fall and one could easily see this as hints of a change or at least one potentially upcoming.